Design roller



Dec. 9,*1958 s. KNAPP, JR 2,363,245

DESIGN ROLLER Filed, Sept. 16,, 1954 9 Sheets-Sheef 1 T fi- E W; 2/ 10 111-11 1: I If J ago/1% Dec. 9, 1958 s. KNAPP, JR

DESIGN ROLLER Filed Sept. 16, 1954 9 Sheets-Sheet 12 INVENTOR. 575%5/1/ /f/V,4PP JZ. Y

ATTOK/Vf) Dec. 9, 1958 s. KNAPP, JR ,8 ,245

DESIGN ROLLER Filed Sept. 16,- 1954 9 Sheets-Sheet 3 INVENTOR.

575 /95 /f/v//PP A, B

ATTOK/VEV Dec. 9, 1958 s. KNAPP, JR 2,863,245

DESIGN'ROLLER Filed Sept. 16, 1954 9 Sheets-Sheet 4 INVENTOR Stephen Knapp Jr.

BY W4 id? 3 ATTORNE S. KNAPP, JR

DESIGN ROLLER Dec. 9, 1958 9 Sheets-sheaf 5 Filed Sept. 16, 1954 Tic E.

IN V EN T 0R. Sw b m KA/APP J6 Dec. 9, 1958 s. KNAPP, JR 2,863,245

DESIGN ROLLER Filed Sept. 16, 1954 9 Sheets-Sheet 7 BYWZW Filed Sept. 16, 1954 Stephen Knapp, Jr.,

United States Patent Office 2,863,245 Patented Dec. 9, i953 DESIGN ROLLER Cleveland Heights, Ohio, assignor to The Sherwin-Williams Company, Cleveland, Ohio, a corporation of Ohio Application September 16, 1954, Serial No. 456,454 3 Claims. (Cl. 41-55) This invention relates to a roller for applying a design to a substantially flat surface, for example, a wall, and particularly to a roller having a design arranged so that the roller may be used freehand by an unskilled person without apparent defects in the design as it appears on the finished decorated wall.

It has previously been proposed to apply a design pattern in paint or the like on a flat wall surface by means of a roller having raised portions corresponding to the design to be applied. Such a roller is provided with a reservoir of some sort for supplying paint or other coloring material to the design bearing roller, and is operated by placing the roller against the wall near the top and rolling it downwardly over a vertical strip of the wall surface. Each downward movement of the roller. is spoken of as a pass. Such design bearing rollers of the prior art require .considerable skill in their use. When used by unskilled persons, various faults appear in the design on the finished wall. Three of the most common faults are known in the trade as overlaps, holidays and tracking.

Most unskilled persons tend to make each pass of the roller overlap a portion of the pattern applied on the previous pass. Such an error by the person using the roller produces a streaked effect with the design units appearing more closely spaced where the passes overlap.

A minority of individuals tend to leave narrow gaps or holidays between successive passes of the roller. This also produces a streaked effect, butthe streaks are characterized by too wide a spacing of the design elements ofthe pattern rather than a too close spacing of them.

The term tracking signifies the production of undesired lanes or rivers extending diagonally from one pass to another and perhaps diagonally orirregularly across three or four passes of theroller. The effect is analogous to the check rows which may be observed when passing an orchard or a field in which trees or plants are laid'out in regular squares. Diagonal allignments of the trees or plants then appear, extending across the field, at various angles from the observers eye. It has been found that, when a design bearing roller of the prior art is used by an unskilled person, similar diagonal lines or tracks appear. These lines or tracks may be irregular rather than straight, and arecreated by the appearance of distinctive elements of the design pattern at intervals in the successive passes of the design painting roller on a wall.

Tracking is caused by failure-of the operator to adjust the angular position of the roller accurately at the beginning of each pass, which must be done very carefully if all passes are to start at the same point in the pattern. It will be appreciated that such adjustment of the roller is difiicult, unless complex mechanical guides are used. The usual unskilled person operatingsuch a Iollerwill start each new pass with the roller displaced elements in the manner somewhat in one particular sense from the preceding one, with the result that the repetitions of the pattern show up in a sort of diagonal alignment of distinctive design elements in succeeding passes, thereby producing tracks.

An object of the present invention is to provide a roller for applying a design on a wall surface, and on which the design elements are located at random with respect to each other in such a manner that errors in applying the roller do not result in apparent imperfections in the pattern on the finished wall.

This and other objects of the invention are accomplished by providing a roller with a pattern arranged so that the design units of the pattern appear as nearly as possible at completely random intervals. Inorder to provide such a pattern several rules must be followed:

(1) The design units of the pattern, whether they are single design elements or composite units built up from several connected elements, must all have the same motif;

(2) The angular orientation of the design units must vary over a range at least aswide as the range of varia tion commonly encountered between successive passes of the roller due to errorson the part of the applier;

(3) The design units of the pattern must be completely disconnected from one another; and

(4) The distribution of the designunits over the surface of the roller must be irregular.

It is also desirable that the design units vary in size over a range such that the largest unit is at least three times the size of the smallest.

Not all irregular distributions of the design units will effect the desired appearance in the finished wall. There isdisclosed herein a specific method of establishing an irregular distribution of the design elements in a way which will. produce the desired results. According to this method, a number of small sub-areas or zones are selected, roughly equal in size to twice the largest design element. These sub-areas or zones are then distributed over the developed surface of the roll in a random manner, such that all the zones are non-contiguous, and substantially all zones are spaced from the ends of the roller. A second set of similar zones is'then distributed over the developed'silrface of the roller. Many, but not all of the zones of the second set are located between adjacent zones of the first set, and the concentration of the zones of the second set is greater near the ends of the roller than elsewhere. The design elements of the selected motif are then applied, thickly to the first set of zones and lightly to the second set of zones.

The design elements are then finally applied with an intermediate density to the intervening areas between the two sets of zones.

it has been found that a distribution of the design just described will produce a pattern which is sufiiciently random with respect to the location and appearance of the design elements so that errors by the person applying the rollerto a surface are not apparent in the finished work.

Other objects of this invention will become apparent from a consideration of the following specification and claims, taken together with the accompanying drawings.

Fig. 1 is an elevational view applying a pattern to a wall;

Fig. 2 is a developed view of the surface of a roller, and illustrates an initial step in the application to that developed surface of a design embodying the invention;

Fig. 3 is a developed view similar to Fig. 2, showing a further step in the preparation of the design;

Fig. 4 is a developed view similar to FigspZ and 3 showing the finished design;

of a typical roller for Fig. 5 illustrates sections of two adjacent passes of the roller of Fig. 4, showing a portion of the passes overlapped and a portion spaced apart;

Fig. 6 is a view similar to Fig. 3, illustrating the invention as applied to a different design;

Fig. 7 is a view similar to Fig. 4, illustrating the finished design of Fig. 6;

Fig. 8 is a view similar to Figs. 3 and 6, illustrating the invention as applied to still another design;

Fig. 9 is a view similar to Figs. 4 and 7, illustrating the finished design of Fig. 8; and

Fig. 10 is a view of a portion of a wall surface on which the design of Fig. 9 has been applied once by a vertical pass and again by a horizontal pass.

The roller illustrated in Fig. l is completely described and claimed in the copending application of Axel E. Ogren, Serial No. 329,233, filed January 2, 1953, now Patent No. 2,731,657. It is included here by way of illustration of a suitable roller to which the present invention may be applied. Briefly, the roller of Fig. 1 includes a handle 1 connected by a shank 2 to a yoke 3, terminating in an axle 4 supporting a paint reservoir roller 5, of sponge rubber or other similar material which will retain a considerable quantity of paint. Mounted on the yoke 3 is a pivot frame 6 in which is journaled,

another yoke 7 terminating in an axle 8 on which is mounted a design bearing roller 9. The pivot frame 6 is provided with an extension 10 which overlies an arm 11 formed on the yoke 7. A leaf spring 12 biases the arm 11 into engagement with the extension 10 and thereby holds the design bearing roller 9 in engagement with the surface of the paint supplying roller 5. This is the normal operating position of the parts. When it is .desired to replenish the supply of paint in the roller 5, the arm 11 is depressed against the spring 12, supporting the rollers so that the roller 5 may be loaded without unduly loading the design bearing roller 9.

In order to provide a design for a paint roller which will carry out the objects of the invention, the first step is the selection of a motif for the design units. This is a matter of artistic taste or talent exclusively, and has no bearing on the present invention. The motif must be such that it is applicable to design units which are spaced from one another. The motif must also be of a suitable size, bearing in mind the desired size of the roller. A roll 7 inches long having a circumference of 8% inches is typical. In general, the longest dimention of the design elements for a hand operated roller of conventional size should be between /8 inch and 1 inch. This is not a fixed rule, however. Note, for example, the exception in Fig. 7. The design unit may be angular, such as a small triangle or triangles of varying sizes, or it may be a straight line of variety of widths and lengths. Essentially, therefore, any suitable element, fanciful or representative of a known object, may be used as the design element or elements forming a motif of the over-all design. It is not critical to this invention what the shape of this design element is. Familiar signs may also be used as design elements such as, for example, the letters of the Greek alphabet.

The next step is to lay out an area representing the developed surface of the design roller, such as the area within the frame 13 of Fig. 2. Near each of the long sides of this area, there are laid out dotted lines 14, approximately one-half inch from the sides of the frame 13. Alternatively, the lines 14 may be as close as onequarter inch to the sides of frame 13.

There are then laid out within the frame 13 a number of sub-areas or zones 15, shown in full lines in Fig. 2. Each of the zones 15 is approximately the size of the largest design unit to be used, and may range from 1% to about 8% of the total area of the developed surface. The zones 15 are distributed irregularly across the area within the frame 13, observing the following rules:

(1) All the zones are spaced from one another.

(2) Only small portions of the zones 15 extend between the dotted lines 14 and the sides of the frame 13.

(3) The zones 15 vary as to size within a range of about 2:1, i. e. the largest is about twice the size of the smallest.

(4) The zones 15 all have the same general shape, in this instance oval, but on the other hand each zone 15 differs individually in shape from all the other zones 15.

(5) The total area covered by all the zones 15 should be approximately 20% of the total area within the frame 13.

The next step is the application to the area within the frame 13 of a second series of zones indicated in dotted lines in Fig. 2 by the reference numeral 16. The zones 16 are applied according to the following rules.

(1) The variation of the zones 16 as to size and shape is approximately the same as zones 15, defined above.

(2) The zones 16 are irregularly distributed within the frame 13, with a substantially greater concentration of the zones 16 between the dotted lines 14 and the sides of the frame 13.

(3) In many instances, the zones 16 should be located between zones 15 but not all the zones 16 should be so located.

Having located the zones 15 and 16, the next step is to apply the selected motif to the zones. In the zones 15, the design units should be applied with a relatively high concentration, i. e. so that the proportion of the surface covered by the design units in each of those zones ranges from 20% to 60%. In the zones 16 the design units are applied with a relatively light concentration, i. e. approximately 0 to 10% of the zones 16 are covered by the design elements. In the remainder of the surface within the frame 13, the design elements are applied with an intermediate concentration, i. e. between 10% and 20% of the area is covered by design elements.

When this process is complete, the developed area of the roll appears as shown in Fig. 3. The lines defining the zones 15 and 16 are then removed, leaving the finished design as seen in Fig. 4. It has been found that in a complete design of this type, from 3% to 30% of the total area will be covered by design units.

In selecting the motif and applying the design units to the zones 15 and 16 and to the intermediate areas, the following considerations should be borne in mind.

(1) The design units must all have a common motif. The design unit may be a single element or a composite unit, as seen in Fig. 4. The typical design unit in that figure is a composite unit consisting of one circle 17 with a number, typically three or four, branching curved lines 18 extending outwardly from a single point on the periphery of the circle and with various curvatures and directions. However, some of the smaller units in Fig. 4 consist of circles only (see circles 17a) or curved lines only (see unit 18a). Alternatively, all of the units may be single elements or all may be composite. This particular motif has been called a Falling Feather.

(2) The angular orientation of the design units must vary over a range at least as wide as the range commonly encountered between successive passes of the roller due to errors on the part of the applier. Typically, this means a minimum range of about 10, but it may be desirable to have the angular orientation range substantially over 360", as it does in the case of Fig. 4. Conceivably, this requirement may be met by a design unit having a motif without angular orientation, e. g. a bulls eye pattern. The absence of angular orientation would then be the equivalent of a universal or 360 variation in the orientation.

(3) The design units of the pattern must be completely disconnected from one another, i. e. each design unit must be spaced from all other units.

(4) The distribution of the design units must be irregular. If the procedure with regard to zones 15 and 16,

outlined in connectionwith Figs.2 and'3 is followed, then the distribution of thedesign units will be sufliciently lrregular 'to produce the desired results. However, it should be realized that it is not necessary to follow these specificsteps in order to produce a functionally equivalent des gn. .In other words, an artist having in mind the d1str1bution of the design-units which would be produced by following the steps-outlinedin steps 2 and 3, might go ahead and draw up a complete pattern having the desired distribution, without ever bothering to set u the zones and 16. A

It is also desirable, but not necessary, vary in size over arange such that the least three times the size of the smallest.

When the design, completed as described above, is ap plied to a printing roll as a relief or intaglio printing surface, two opposing edges of the design meet to form the cylindrical printing roll, and the remaining opposing edges become the outer edges or printing edges of the roll. Consideration must be given, therefore, to the printng edges and thedensity of design which can be tolerated n these areas. Strips along the printing edge of A1 to /2 Inch width, approximately, are the areas wherein difiiculty can occur. One of the principal objects of this invention 1s the production of a design for a printing roll of the relief type which is used in conjunction with the ordinary familiar-paint roller, as an inking roll. Such a combination printing and applicator roll is fully described in application Serial No. 329,233, filed January 2, 1953, by Ogren, mentioned above. This rolleris designed to be used by hand and experience with such rollers has shown that the ordinary person in applying design to a wall surface will tend to overlap on successive passes rather than miss a preceding pass, leaving an unprinted area. Thus, construction of the design for the printing roller takes into account the experience gained, and in these marginal areas although variation in density between contiguous areas is maintained, the density in any one sub-area is reduced over what it might otherwise be in a centrally located sub-area. The reduction in density in a given sub-area should range from about M; to /2 of what it would be if it were centrally located. Moreover, regularity of positioning sub'-areas of like density is avoided, since when the over-all design is repeated a number of times on a wall, for example, any regularity of areas of similar density will track. This is particularly important in the marginal areas at the printing edges. For example, tracking would occur to a distracting extent if the right hand printing margin contained design elements in sub-areas of alternating 3%, 20%, 3% densities and the order of such areas on the left hand margin were 3%, 20%, 3%, 20%. Thus, random dispersal of densities along the marginal edges using lighter densities than would be used if the sub-area were located more centrally of the design will yield a pattern which has much reduced tendency to tracking.

It will be observed that in Fig. 4 there are in the innermost portions of the design area spaces which correspond to those which would occur on overlapping or spacing apart successive passes. Note, for example, the horizontal space between the circle 17b and the curved line 1811. If a second pass or impression of this design is placed immediately to the right of that shown, it must overlap, abut, or be spaced therefrom. On overlap, the wide space between the left edge and the point 180 will appear to be shortened to approach the distance between 1712 and 18b. On abutting, which in hand operation is rare, it can be seen that the variety of spacings from the left margin will blend in with the variety of spacings interior of the design. On spacing apart, there are enough design elements and combinations thereof on the edges in staggered relationship that the spacing relationship does 'not appear to be disturbed. Hence the over-all effect under any of the'three possible situations will appear to be substantially the same.

that design units largest unit is at There are also interior of the design boundaries design elements or combinations thereof which closely correspond to those obtained from the outer portions of the design under any of the conditions mentioned above.

Thus spacing and design elements cooperate under conditions of overlapping, abutting, or spacing apart to proof this invention, material of paint consistency will be printed on a wall. If adjacent lines of the same or different design elements are too close together, definition will be lost and instead of two distinct lines, a heavy single line will be obtained. Therefore, breathing space between lines of design elements should be supplied, this in mostcases amounting to at least about 5 of an inch.

Variation in density of design elements can be secured in any of a number of ways. For example, the design elements may be made of light lines in one case and heavier lines in another case. Density may be increased by utilizing lines of the same Weight but multiplying the design elements. Density may also be increased by utilizing design elements which are naturally heavier from a coverage point of view than other design elements. For most purposes, however, it will be found most desirable to achieve variation in density by varying: the number of elements and the thickness of the lines describing them.

Another mechanical consideration in the fabrication of suitable designs stems from the fact that the printing roll of the hand operated type such as referred to in the above Serial No. 329,233 is usually made from an elastomeric material, and a backing to the embossed printing surface is provided which is quite resilient. This prevents undue skidding of the design on the surface. Design elements should appear at spaced intervals along the printing edge in order to provide mechanical support for the ends of the roll. This can be done without sacrifice of the requirements for lighter density of design at the printing edges and accordingly both structural strength and design continuity are maintained. It is the design elements located at the extreme edges of the area which allow for a succeeding pass to lack overlap or registration with the preceding pass without destroying the overall eifect of the design on the surface to be decorated.

Reference has been had herein to the development of the roll. his term is used in the mathematical sense, signifying that an area corresponding to the surface area of a cylindrical printing roll is obtained by figuratively cutting the surface along an element of the surface (a straight line) and placing the surface in a single plane.

When the design has been completed in the manner aforesaid, a relief or intaglio printing roll duplicating such design is fabricated in the usual manner. For example, reference may be had to the application of James V. Hunn, Scr. No. 385,393, filed October 12, 1953, for a Method of Making Printing Rollers. Using the two roll hand applicator as described in the application of Axel Ogren, aforesaid, the inking roll is loaded and the relief design applicator roll wetted with the paint or inking composition from a suitable tray. Normally, the decorator begins at the upper left hand corner of a room, the walls of which have been coated with a single contrasting color. The design is then applied in successive passes in a vertical or horizontal direction, or, in some cases, first vertically and then horizontally. The passage of the roller down the surface from top to bottom is controlled only by the decorator and in the absence of mechanical means for stabilizing the path of the printing roll, variation from a fixed path is to be expected. in a succeeding pass from top to bottom, the decorator r attempts to begin the next pass precisely where the previous pass ended, in competition, however, with the human factor and chance. More often than not, the decorator unintentionally overlaps the preceding pass by as much as /2 inch as experience with these devices has shown. If he misses the previous pass, the gap or holiday may be as much as /2 inch. The construction of the design, then, can be seen to be of critical nature since a property of the design must be an ability to erase the human errors in applying the design from a print roll by hand such that the completed effect is one of a continuous design.

Figure 5 This figure illustrates the pattern which is produced on a finished wall when a misalignment occurs between two successive passes of a roller carrying the pattern of Fig. 4. -In Fig. 5, the two passes of the roller are outlined in dotted lines respectively at 19 and 20. It will be noted that these passes are spaced by a gap 21 at their upper ends and that they overlap by a space 22 at their lower ends. However, it will be recognized that a person observing the finished wall, without having the dotted lines 19 and 20 to guide him, would be unable to tell where the pass 19 terminated and the pass 20 began, so that the misalignment between the successive passes could not be observed.

Figureso and 7 These figures illustrate the invention as applied to a design unit having a motif considerably different from that of Figs. 2 to 5.

The motif of these figures may be described simply as a long wavy line 24 extending generally in a single direction. In Fig. 6, there are shown zones 25 which correspond to the zones 15 of Figs. 2 and 3, and in which the design elements 24 appear in high concentration. There are also illustrated zones 26 corresponding to the zones 16 of Figs. 2 and 3, wherein the design elements 24 are either in light concentration or completely absent. Outside the zones 25 and 26, an intermediate concentration of the design elements has been provided. Reviewing the rules stated above for the location of the zones 15 and 16 for the application of the design elements to the zones and to the intervening spaces, it will be seen that these rules have been followed in Fig. 6 as they were in Fig. 4.

It should be noted that in applying the design elements to the zones, the artist should not be guided rigidly by the, zone boundaries, but may pass over them moreor-less freely. If he does not do so, the use of the zone principle may result in a pattern which appears too rigid and fixed, rather than having the random quality which is necessary to the invention.

After the design units have been applied to the zones and to the intervening spaces, the zone lines are removed, leaving the finished patterns as illustrated in Fig. 7, with only the design elements 24 appearing.

Figures 8 to These figures illustrate the invention as applied to still another design. Here the motif may be described as a pair of intersecting lines having a generally triangular contour, i. e. a triangle is the smallest geometrical figure which can be used to cover the motif.

As in the previous designs, the zones of high concentration 27 are first drawn in, then zones of low concentration 28, and finally the design elements 29 are applied, following the iules stated above in connection with Figs. 2 to 4. The finished design is shown in Fig. 9.

Fig. 10 illustrates a method for applying the roller which may be used in the case of any of the designs constructed in accordance with the invention. In this method, the roller is passed over the surface once in a vertical direction and then again in a horizontal direc tion. The horizontal and vertical designs blend with one another, so that it is impossible for the observer 8 to tell whether a particular design element was applied during the horizontal pass or the vertical pass.

Fig. 10 represents an extreme situation, which would not be normally encountered in the use of the design rollers embodying the invention. The design rollers embodying the invention are nevertheless capable of handling this situation and in fact may be deliberately applied in this manner if the person using them so desires.

The essentials of the present invention as outlined above are simply mechanical rules for the preparation of designs which, when fashioned on a roller surface, will produce a desirable mechanical effect, i. e. the absence of obvious defects in the finished pattern. The construction of a roller according to these rules will accomplish that desired mechanical effect. However, it is not within the scope of this invention to outline a method for producing a pattern that is desirably artistic. Such qualities can be imparted to the pattern only by the use of artistic talent in the selection of a motif, the drawing of the individual design units, and in the application of the design units to the developed area of the roller surface. It is not suggested that the mere following of the mechanical rules stated above will necessarily produce an artistically acceptable design.

Other modes of applying the principle of this invention may be employed instead of those specifically set forth above, changes being made as regards the details herein disclosed, provided the elements set forth in any of the following claims, or the equivalent of such be employed.

It is, therefore, particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed as the invention:

1. A roller for unguided manual application of a design to a substantially flat surface, comprising a handle, and a roll rotatably mounted on the handle, said roll comprising raised printing areas forming a design pattern and separated by recessed areas, said printing areas being in the form of separate, disconnected design units having a common motif, with angular orientations differing over a range substantially wider than the range of angular orientations commonly encountered between passes of the roll over a surface due to the appliers errors, said design units being distributed over the roll surface with a sufficient irregularity of density so that the design unit density appearing at certain of the central portions of the roll approximates the design unit density at overlapping portions of adjacent passes of the roll, and the design unit density appearing at certain other central portions of the roll approximates the design unit density at laterally spaced portions of adjacent passes of the roll, said irregularity of density formed in the original development of the roller surface from subdivision of the developed surface of the design roller into a first group comprising a plurality of sub-areas having the same general shape, irregularly spaced apart and ranging in size from about 1% to about 8% of the total area of the developed surface, the variation in the area of said sub-areas ranging from about 1:1 to about 2:1, covering an area of about 20% of the entire developed surface, only small portions of said sub-areas extending into marginal areas corresponding to the edges of the roll and ranging in width from 0.25 to 0.5 inch; further sub-division of the remaining area of said developed surface into a second group comprising a plurality of sub-areas having substantially the same size and shape as the sub-areas of the first group, said second group of sub-areas being irregularly spaced apart within the remaining developed area and having a substantially greater concentration of said second sub-areas within the aforesaid marginal areas, said second sub-areas covering substantially the same proportion of area as that covered by the first group of sub-areas, and application of said design units having a common motif to said two groups of sub-areas and in the free spaces not covered by said sub-areas, the design unit density in the subareas of the first group of said sub-areas ranging from 20% to 60%, the design unit density in the sub-areas of the second group amounting to approximately to and the remainder of the surface within the developed area having a design unit density at an intermediate value between 10% and 20%.

2. A roller for unguided manual application of a design to a substantially flat surface, comprising a handle, and a roll rotatably mounted on the handle, said roll comprising raised printing :areas forming a design pattern and separated by recessed areas, said printing areas being in the form of separate, disconnected design units having a common motif, with angular orientations differing over a range of at least 10, said design units being distributed over the roll surface with a sufiicient irregularity of density so that the design unit density appearing at certain of the central portions of the roll is substantially greater than the density at the end portions, and the design unit density appearing at the other central portions of the roll is substantially less than the density at the end portions, said certain central portions being irregularly located with respect to said other central portions; said irregularity of density formed in the original development of the roller surface from sub-division of the developed surface of the design roller into a first group comprising a plurality of sub-areas having the same general shape, irregularly spaced apart and ranging in size from about 1% to about 8% of the total area of the developed surface, the variation in the area of said sub-areas ranging from about 1:1 to about 2:1, covering an area of about 20% of the entire developed surface, only small portions of said sub-areas extending into marginal :areas corresponding to the edges of the. roll and ranging in width from 0.25 to 0.5 inch; from further sub-division of the remaining area of said developed surface into a second group comprising a plurality of sub-areas having substantially the same size and shape as the sub-areas of the first group, said second group of sub areas being irregularly spaced apart within the remaining developed area and having substantially greater concentration of said second sub-areas within the aforesaid marginal areas, said second sub-areas covering substantially the same proportion of area as that covered by the first group of subareas, and application of said design units having a common motif to said two groups of sub-areas and in the free spaces not covered by said sub-areas, the design unit density in the sub-areas of the first group of said sub-areas ranging from 20% to 60%, the design unit density in the sub-areas of the second group amounting to approximately 0 to 10%, and the remainder of the surface within the 3. A roller for unguided manual application of a design,

to a substantially fiat surface, comprising a handle and a roll rotatably mounted on the handle, said roll comprising raised printing areas forming a design pattern and separated by recessed areas, said printing areas being in the form of separate, disconnected design units having a common motif with angular orientation differing over a range substantially Wider than the range of angular orientations commonly encountered between passes of the roll over a surface due to appliers errors, said design units being distributed over the roll surface with an irregularity of density formed in the original development of the roller surface from sub-division of the developed surface of the design roller into a first group comprising a plurality of sub-areas having the same general shape, irregularly spaced apart and ranging in size from about 1% to about 8% of the total area of the developed surface, the variation in the area of said sub-areas ranging from about 1:1 to about 2:1, covering an area of about 20% of the entire developed surface, only small portions of said sub-areas extending into marginal area corresponding to the edges of the roll and ranging in width from 0.25 to 0.5 inch; further sub-division of the remaining area of said developed surface into a second group comprising a plurality of sub-areas having substantially the same size and shape as the sub-areas of the first group, said second group of said sub-areas being irregularly spaced apart within the remaining developed area and having asubstantially greater concentration of said second sub-areas within the aforesaid marginal areas, said second sub-areas covering substantially the same proportion of area as that covered by the first group of subareas, and application of said design units having a common motif to said two groups of sub-areas and in the free spaces not covered by said sub-areas, the design unit density in the sub-areas of the first group of said subareas ranging from 20% to the design unit density in the sub-areas of the second group amounting to approximately 0 to 10%, and the remainder of the surface within the developed area having a design unit density at an intermediate value between 10% and 20%.

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,616,367 Sprung Nov. 4, 1952 2,630,592 Sultanik Mar. 10, 1953 2,652,774 Sprung Sept. 22, 1953 2,694,874 Coolidge Nov. 23, 1954 

